Sand Art

I was sent one of those damn chain-mail things today. However it wasnt just the usual stuff, it was actually something fantastic! Ill quote what the email says... read it before watching. It sounds stupid and really crazy but its actually pretty cool.


This video shows the winner of "Ukraine’s Got Talent",  Kseniya Simonova, 24,  drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.  The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about $130,000.00 

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated. It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.  She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. 

 
Kseniya Simonova says:  
"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment."


It is obvious that the war is still a sore subject, even the judges were sniffling. Still, an unusal art form but what a great way of telling a story. What to take from this - experiment with media, you never know what may happen. And try to tell a story with what you do. Finally, let the work show the process of how it is made. You can't fail.